The proposed study examines the role of the family in providing care, services, and financial and social-emotional support to members of its older generations. It will employ data from the Social Security Administration's Longitudinal Retirement History Study (LRHS), to determine how these helping and caring patterns are related to a variety of social and demographic factors, including: marital status; presence, number and location of adult children; survival of and responsibilty for aging parents; labor force participation and retirement; and health and well-being. It will carry out longitudinal analyses of determinants and consequences of stability and change in familial relationships over time, and the relationship of these to health status and care and to psychological well-being. The study examines familial relationships within a framework that explicitly relates familial roles and relationships to involvement with institutions outside the family. The study will utilize recently-developed techniques for the analysis of longitudinal data, including structural equation models and multivariate categorical data analysis. The objective of the study is to increase the understanding of the ways in which familial roles and relationships contribute to adaptation and well-being of the young-old during a major period of life cycle change, and to address questions of policy related to the design of health care and social services and the impact of demographic trends on present and future needs of the aging.